BBC Radio Four, the UK's most respected speech based radio network, is making a documentary about the forced sterilization of women in the United States by the Indian Health Service. We would be very grateful to hear from the women who suffered from either being forced or coerced in to having a sterilization operation during the 1970's onwards.

It is crucial for us is to hear people's stories in their own words. Very few interviews with women directly affected by these practices have ever been recorded, and through this documentary we would like to put on the record the experiences of Native American women.

This is a story which remains completely unknown and untold in the UK.As this is an extremely sensitive topic we would keep all names, locations etc completely confidential.

Our female production team will be flying out to record interviews in the US for 4 days from the 10th of April this year and we would like to hear from any women that would potentially like to speak to them for this programme.

We understand that this is an incredibly sensitive area and will be extremely grateful if people take part.

This is happening NOW, in the present and not sometime in the past????

I know that in the 1970s in Los Angeles, there was an outcry as something like this was happening to Black and Hispanic women who were poor. When they'd go into General Hospital for whatever reason (seeking health treatment), they'd be made to sign papers and they didn't know what they were signing; these were women in poverty who were not literate enough to be able to read what they were signing and the paperwork was presented to them as if it were part of the check-in procedure. Turns out they were signing papers giving the hospital permission to sterilize them based on the assumption that illiterate, poor women of color should not be producing offspring they could not support financially and therefore continue the cylcle of poverty.

That was a terrible thing to do to these women; they were really taken advantage of because they were illiterate and could not read what they were signing. Hospital officials were telling them that they were merely signing admission forms, so they were delibrately misleading these women.